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Mollie Brown enters a back room of the New Inn to gather some some cleaning supplies, given that someone just knocked their entire pint glass off a table. A bright light pierces her vision, along with a fucking sandstorm, and she scurries back to the doorway. A dark shape appears in the whirling light and sand and hits the shelving with a colossal crash. Mollie yelps and skids even further backwards.
A muffled groan emanates from the pile, a pale hand stretching out, clearly in pain.
"ROB!" she screeches. "Rob, get your ass over here!" It's your goth twink boyfriend, she doesn't shout, namely because she's still not sure how to explain that the situation seems to be vaguely eldritch in nature. Rob runs into the back room, and freezes.
"Thank you for getting me, Mollie, I've got it from here," he says in a strangled voice. "Have you gotten a raise recently? Ask me later."
Hob's first thought is that Dream never looks like this, and that it's possible he'll be driven mad by things no human was meant to see. Dream's shape and form keep blurring, all faceted edges and bleeding smoke, refractions and reflections, splits and fissures of pure void or galaxies.
The second is that if Dream looks like this something is horribly wrong. Dream looks up at Hob, mouth trying to shape words, but nothing comes out except a noise of unmistakable pain as a particularly harsh fissure opens and then closes. Against his better judgement, he reaches out to try and cradle Dream's staticky face.
- (The walls are coming down the walls are coming down it needs to end tonight – A terrified looking young woman with rainbow dreads and echoey prismatic glitches around her you're hurting us we need the walls – I'm trying to save the world – we need it –
It hurts I have never been so alone – JESSAMY NO – Blood and bone and feathers on glass – We can't stand it it hurts and you need to stop and – Colors, exploding – Stars, empty nothings, torn to flame and bits of essence, you ask for things I cannot give, you're hurting us –
I want to fly, fly, fly and reach the clouds – flowers and flame and gardens – a building coming down around me – we're holding hands and nothing has ever hurt –
A screaming mass of pain and agony as a universe falls apart around his ears – I failed we failed I failed – A world in flame – sirens and screaming – a chorus of ghastly roaring – shattering glass – a thousand different versions of yourself – it's hurting us) -
Hob yelps, falling backwards on his ass. His mind feels like it just got rope burned. There's a smear of blood under his nose. "Holy fuck," he whimpers. If that was part of the collective unconscious – how does Dream stand it?
"Hob?" Dream's voice is faint, a rustle of paper bags. His friend is marginally less staticky. "Are we all right?" Raises a shaking hand to press against his face, as though trying to figure out his own form.
"I'm all right, but I don't think you are," Hob says.
"Where… we were just everywhere," Dream says. "Where's – is this the New Inn?" His voice has a shivery, echoing quality - discordant vibrations of multiple different people talking, rather than smooth and deep.
"Yeah, it's the New Inn, duck."
"Oh. Good," Dream says, voice solidifying briefly. He stands up, only for another frisson of something to pass through him, causing him to sway.
Hob lurches to his feet and heedless of the risks, steadies Dream. "Easy there." This time nothing yeets him to some weird gap in space-time.
Dream hums against him, then shudders.
"Let's go up to my flat," Hob says, and swings Dream upward into his arms. His friend doesn't resist.
"Sorry," Dream says against his shoulder. "It has been a trying time. You – we – I … first the fields flooded, and then there was a sinkhole, and we lost all the outbuildings –"
"I'm sorry, that sounds unpleasant," Hob replies, almost by rote, already trying to think about what Dream might need as he sets his friend down slightly to unlock the door to the flat. Tea. Tea fixed everything. Was Dream hurt in some weird metaphysical way? Psychic wounds? Would a blanket help that kind of emotional state? Fuck.
Afternoon light streams through one of the windows. He propels Dream to the couch, shoving aside some papers, and tells Dream to stay, I don't know if you're hurt. Are you hurt?
"Everything's hurt in a sense," Dream says. "A collective wound. It hurt when the walls collapsed around us. It –" he shudders. "The explosions across the sky are so loud, you know. I got pulled away from my family in the rubble."
Fuck. "Dream, are you hurt?" he tries again. Hob doesn't know else to ask as he starts the kettle.
"Not any more than us all. I can still hear her screams."
"Who?"
"My little girl," Dream says. His eyes dart around the room, glistening with tears and stars. He opens his mouth, but something glitches in the interim, something that Hob's brain refuses to process or remember.
And Dream does not have a daughter. At least Hob's pretty sure he doesn't.
"There was a fire. There wasn't any air." He looks up, wide-eyed and panicked. "Hob…" His eyes shift blue, then back to starry black. They won't land on Hob. They won't land on anything. Dream utters something in at least two different languages that Hob doesn't speak, gasping.
"There's air here, duck. Tell me where 'here' is, Dream. Tell me what you see."
Dream blinks, and presses his hands into his face so hard that a human might have bruised. When he opens them again, he says in a firmer voice, "The New Inn? Hob, I – when – that's not right."
Hob clicks the kettle off and pours water into the tea mugs. "Yes, it is, duck."
"No, that's not right either, the walls came down," Dream says quietly, the discordant quality re-entering his voice. "The walls. They're important." He sounds on the verge of tears, like he's frustrated Hob doesn't understand. "There's too many." Another mutter in a language Hob doesn't know. Another glitch that Hob's brain won't let him process.
"Which walls, love?' Hob asks, pressing a mug of tea into Dream's hands and sitting next to him. "I want to understand."
"The Vortex, she –" Dream takes a sharp inhale of breath, hands wobbling badly enough Hob collects the tea mug and places it on the table. "Hob, it hurts, we're hurting –"
And then he passes out in what would be a dead faint if it were anyone but Dream. His eyes stay open as he flops like a ragdoll into Hob. His visage literally cracks into different versions, rapidfire, and Hob's head hurts and what if Dream is dying?
"Dream?" Hob says frantically. He holds onto his friend, petting his hair and feeling under his jaw and laying a hand over his chest. There is nothing. Hob folds Dream onto his lap, holding him tight, terrified. Dream finally gasps – arching like someone's punched him in the chest and gut, all the breath driven out of him – before sagging back into Hob.
He looks so, so tired. At the time of their last meeting at the New Inn, Hob had been so relieved to see him that he hadn't pressed, prodded, taken quite enough notice of how tired and gaunt and twitchy Dream had gotten. What happened to Dream? What kept him away in 1989, and what had him in such a state now?
"The walls came down," Dream whimpers, eyes currently blue.
"Which walls, darling?" Hob rubs his thumb over Dream's hand. "The walls of a building? Fortification walls? Dams or dikes or levees? Emotional walls? Concrete, brick, earthen, stone, metaphorical?"
"Between dreams," he finally manages. His eyes go distant and starry.
"Hey. Stay here with me," Hob says gently. "That's my hand on yours. You're on my couch in my flat above the New Inn."
"Between dreams. Between," Dream takes a juddering breath. "Between all the parts of us… me. It's hard," and here his hand clutches onto Hob's so hard he knows he's going to bruise, "to separate. The dreamers. From me."
"How can I help, Dream?" Hob asks, squeezing his friend's shoulder. He's still not entirely sure he understands, only that it seems crowded in Dream's head at the moment. But whatever Dream asks him to do, he will.
Dream curls around Hob like a comma, trembling. "I –" His voice comes out next as a burst of static that Hob doesn't understand. Then something that sounds suspiciously like Greek. Hob rubs his back, keeps gripping his hand.
"I need to rest," Dream finally rasps. "Only I keep… losing myself. In the collective. Unconscious."
"Is this helping?" Hob asks.
"Some. But not. Enough. I – need a quiet space. Within it. Where I am. Whole."
"Would one of my dreams be enough?" Hob wonders. Imagines wrapping Dream in a blanket burrito, petting his hair, keeping him safe and whole and grounded.
"Maybe. Like that. Keep… daydreaming."
And so Hob tucks the blanket more securely around Dream, further imagining more blanket burritos and cuddles. Dream hums, softly, and drops his head directly into Hob's chest. He looks safe and warm all wrapped up in Hob's lap like this, and Hob wants to cuddle Dream like this again. Maybe putting on a film or television show, maybe the Great British Bake Off? God, he could probably try scone recipes on Dream, the poor bastard looks like he could use the food.
He looks down again, and Dream has gone almost totally lax in Hob's grip, eyes closed. There's a purr rumbling from his chest, like a languid comfy cat. He wonders if Dream can turn into a cat, and if cat Dream would tolerate being purrito'd, as the Internet calls it. Dream makes a faint hissing sound at that thought.
Hob holds Dream for hours, until his own eyes close without permission. His dreams are a bit chaotic, a staticky edge to them that he instinctively knows is caused by Dream himself. When he opens them, it's dark outside.
Dream looks up at Hob, just waking, and exhales. He feels much more clear, settled back into the neater lines and order that demarcate the walls of the collective unconscious.
"You're still here," he says, carding a hand through Dream's hair.
"Yes." Dream sighs, turning his head into the touch.
"Are you feeling better?"
"...Yes. But I would. Stay a bit longer, if you would allow it."
"You can stay as long as you need, duck," Hob breathes. "Just… will you explain what happened? When you're able to?"
The expression on Hob's face is … fear. Hob had been afraid for him. He does not remember all of it, truthfully. There are parts that are probably lost forever. He remembers some things more than others. Hob's arms around him, the way they still are. Hob's voice, steady through it all.
"There was a phenomenon called a Dream Vortex," he explains. "Which. Destabilizes the Dreaming and then the Waking. I am the Dreaming, and it is. Complex. I was. Lost in the subconscious." His head drops back down to Hob's chest; he's still worn thin, the walls a little sparse in some areas.
Dream also suspects it wouldn't have hit him so severely if it hadn't been for the wounds of the past century, the past millennia, hitting hard and fast. With a bolt of terror, he thinks it might happen again to a lesser extent, even without a Vortex. He's so tired. He's wanted to collapse since he escaped the cage, let himself go into the drift.
Hob tightens his arms, as if realizing something similar, or at least that Dream's tired. "Stay a while, Dream. You're trembling like a stiff wind could blow you away."
He is still shaking slightly.
"I'm glad you came to me," Hob murmurs.
"I trust you," Dream answers, and something shines in Hob's eyes, suspiciously wet.
"Gonna kill me one of these days, dove," Hob says, bringing his hand down to rub at Dream's nape.
"I will endeavor to explain more later," Dream says, laying his ear over Hob's chest, feeling the rise and fall, the steady heartbeat.
"Take all the time you need," Hob says, hands kneading into Dream's shoulders.
Outside, the stars have emerged, barely visible through the London light pollution. Dream opens his eyes - a dark midnight blue with stars in perfect clarity - before letting them fall shut, as the remaining tension melts out of his body.